In Jiseong District's — the part the news never showed when praising the Cheongrim "innovation capital" — apartment buildings leaned tiredly against one another like drunks after a fight.
This was where Jin Taek lived.
A boy with no god's mercy, born into a family that was already rotting from the inside.
His father, JinKyung-ho, was a man the district called The Mad Teacher. By day, he taught at the Cheongrim High School .By night — and sometimes even in the staffroom between classes — he fed his appetite for chaos. He was having an affair with another teacher, a woman whose perfume could be smelled before she even turned a corner.
Everyone in Jiseong's Area knew. Everyone in the school knew. Even Jin Taek's mother knew.
She was a gentle woman with a fragile heart, and every time she questioned her husband, he would turn into a storm and beat jin. The beatings would come first, the threats next:
"If you want your son to live a good life, keep your mouth shut."
And she obeyed — not because she was weak, but because she was scared.
At least… that's what Jin Taek thought when he was younger.
Now, at eleven, that fear had curdled into something else inside him. Hatred.
Not for his father — that man was already a monster in his eyes. But for his mother, who let herself be crushed again and again.
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School offered no escape.
The worst of his tormentors came from Mudang Strip, the infamous outer slum that lay beyond the empire's gates. Thick-armed boys who swung fists the way other kids swung sticks, their muscles earned from hauling crates and scrap instead of gym class. They beat him because his father had humiliated some of their older brothers, strutting like a hero in front of his mistress.
But as much as Jin Taek despised the slum kids, he feared someone else more.
Snakes he was scared of them since childhood but this time they are different.
Snakes in from of people
And in Jiseong's — the block where he lived — snakes were common enough that people joked they were part of the rent. The kids here knew his fear. They used it like a blade. Jin taek mumbled
"Those slum boys, they hit me and the pain fades after a day. These Sector 3 rats? They don't let go. They slither into my life, into my head. They wait for the right moment to sink their teeth in."
One evening, I came home to find my father waiting, belt in hand.
"You broke the glass on my car!"
I hadn't even been near the car. I tried to speak, but the first strike cut my words short. Then the second. Then the third.
The real culprits? The same kids from my block. They'd told my father it was me — and that was enough. My father never asked questions. This is how I was living his life since past few years.
"I hate living like this. I don't want a normal life. I want a life where I can scare all of them — the snakes, the slum brutes, the laughing neighbors. I want them to choke on fear when they hear my name."
But his mother's voice always came back to me, soft and trembling:
"If you bully a bully… you become a bully."
So he always swallowed the rage.
Because even if his mother didn't know it, even if she thought he hated her for being weak… the truth was different.
She was the only one he had left.
And one day, he'd be strong enough to protect her.
No matter the cost.